


Tipping Point

by kinosternon



Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: (literally), Alternate Universe - College/University, Gymnastics, Idiots in Love, Jealousy, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:14:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23353783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinosternon/pseuds/kinosternon
Summary: College AU: Yamato helps run the gymnastics club at his university, Eiji is an underclassman who joined recently, and Yamato wants to ask Eiji out—unless Eiji's taken, that is.
Relationships: Hyuuga Yamato/Ootori Eiji
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9
Collections: Heavens Gift Exchange 2020





	Tipping Point

Yamato finished pushing the balance beam into its corner in the gym equipment closet and brushed off chalk off his palms. The captain had a standing commitment on Monday evenings, and as second-in-command of the gymnastics club, Yamato considered this one of his many duties. 

He was kind of excited about it tonight, though. It wasn’t every week that this particular cute underclassmen stuck around after practice was over. 

He made his way across the nearly-clean practice floor, where said underclassman had finished rolling up the rest of the mats. "Thanks again for helping me clean up, Eiji.” 

"No problem," Eiji said, and then, "Ah—" 

Familiar by now with that particular sound, Yamato dived and caught the rolled-up mat before it could tip over entirely. "Whoa there! Careful." 

"Sorry," Eiji said. "Nice catch!" 

Yamato hefted the mat and perched it on top of one shoulder. "If it's too heavy for you, you can just say." 

"It shouldn't be," Eiji said, and he looked faintly pink. "Today’s practice was a real workout, that’s all." 

"Yeah, you could stand to work on your stamina," Yamato answered, matter-of-fact. He turned and used one foot to lever the other mat off the ground, then lifted it onto his other shoulder so he could carry them both to the storage closet. "It's not bad for where you’re at in your training, but it seems like that and your core strength are your main stumbling blocks right now." 

"I know," Eiji said, falling into step behind him. "I got into gymnastics pretty late, and I'm just so far behind some of the other club members.” He paused at the door, hovering, as Yamato tipped the first mat into its usual place. “You spend so much time helping me, too, Yamato-kun—I feel like it's a disservice to you." 

"Nah, that's not it at all." Yamato put the second mat down with a thud and returned to Eiji, putting one hand on his hip and wagging his finger at Eiji with the other. "Listen up—you have a lot of potential, whether or not you realize it. You're graceful, you've got just the right build for this sort of thing…” Yamato put his hand on top of Eiji’s head, wishing he had more of a way with words. “You've got a gift for this, you'll see. You're just not trained for it yet." 

"I-if you say so..." Eiji looked down, gripping one arm with his hand. Yamato scowled—he didn't like Eiji having so little faith in his abilities, but he was a little worried he'd made him uncomfortable. 

Then Eiji looked up. "Thanks, Yamato-kun. That means a lot, coming from you." 

His smile sent something sharp and alarmingly intense straight through Yamato's chest. He stepped back and cleared his throat, trying to find his voice. 

"You're welcome," he managed, and then paused, steeling himself. No harm in asking, right? "Actually...if you want to get stronger or build up stamina, that's strength and cardio. I do some extra workouts on our off-days. You could join me, if you're interested." 

It was depressingly difficult to look him in the eye after that little invitation, Yamato thought. If he could barely manage this, how was he ever going to work up the courage to ask Eiji out properly? 

"I—that sounds great! I'd love to!" Eiji almost jumped in place, eyes sparkling. "Would that really be all right, Yamato-kun?" 

"Of course. I offered, didn't I?" Yamato walked past Eiji, letting the angle hide his own flush as he led him out of the building. "Next session is tomorrow at six, out on the running track. Wanna come?" 

"Yeah!" Eiji said, and Yamato's stomach jumped at the eager smile in his voice. "Thanks again!" 

Eiji and cardio went together well, Yamato thought to himself a little wildly, still amazed that Eiji had actually said yes. Luckily for him, Eiji and cardio seemed like they'd be the perfect match, given the havoc Eiji tended to wreak on his heart rate. 

* * *

The next day took a stupidly long time to pass. Class was usually distracting enough, between sitting in the front and squinting at the slides and looking like he was paying attention whenever the teacher looked his way, but today even all of that wasn't enough to keep him from staring at the clock as the hands inched along. 

(He did his best to pay attention, he was just really bad at looking like it. Bad enough he had to sit still for an hour and a half each class; if he didn't doodle he couldn't focus on what the teacher was saying, and if he read along he'd get distracted puzzling out the words. Pretending he was playing a student in a TV show or something helped.) 

By the time evening actually came, his stomach was doing flip-flops that told him his usual pre-workout protein shake was maybe a bad idea. He skipped it—probably best to give Eiji a bit of a handicap. He wasn't weak by any stretch of the imagination, but he definitely had less experience than Yamato with running. 

He did a few laps around the track before Eiji showed up, too, for good measure, which also helped to pass the time. He switched to stretching a few minutes before he was supposed to arrive, pretending that his heart pounding was just winding down from his warm-up. 

He waited. And waited, and switched to some one-armed handstands to pass the time, and then did a few flips across the grass to keep himself limber before finally giving up and checking his watch. 

Eiji was late. 

Yamato flopped onto the grass and sighed. Well. It wasn't as though he'd ordered Eiji to come; it had been more of a standing invitation. Maybe Eiji was just being polite, or something had come up. Or maybe he'd thought Yamato had meant a different day. Or... 

Yamato scowled and scrubbed a hand through his hair. Why did it even matter? He’d tried, at least. Waiting any longer was just going to derail his workout and leave him feeling even worse— 

He'd just get started anyway, then. And run extra fast to make up for the time lost. Yeah. 

Once he got a rhythm going, it genuinely didn't feel as bad, which was a relief. Yamato slipped easily into the runner's high after the first few laps and started adding in step-climbing up and down the stands around the running track. Then he wandered further, leaving the track entirely to run rings around the outside. 

It was nothing he hadn't done before, but he was unexpectedly interrupted in the first half hour by a distant voice that sounded too familiar. 

He veered off course, arguing with himself the whole way, but really, it couldn't hurt to check, right? 

Except it really could—and not because he'd heard wrong. 

Eiji was walking down the road across the street from the running track, towards the dorms. Moreover, he wasn't alone—he was with someone. Not with, leaning on someone a little taller than he was—a man Yamato didn't recognize, with longish hair slicked back in a sleazy-looking hairdo and a smile that was too wide to be trustworthy. 

As Yamato watched, ducking a bit so he stayed behind a convenient hedge, Eiji leaned further into the man, and they both started laughing. 

Yamato waited until they had gone on their way and wouldn't spot him, then booked it around the side of the stadium and back inside. He'd stay on the running track after all, he decided, maybe get a few sprints in. He wasn't sure if he was angry, jealous, or humiliated, but regardless, he suddenly had a lot of negative energy to work through. 

He let the workout run a little longer than usual, but stops himself before he can work himself into exhaustion—sure, it'd feel good now, but he'd probably regret it tomorrow. 

It wasn't till he got back to his dorm that he bothered to check his phone, and he felt an unpleasant swoop in his stomach at the message he found waiting there. 

_Sorry about tonight,_ it read. _I wanted to make it, but I couldn't._

_I'll see you tomorrow though?_

He surprised himself by chuckling a bit at the second message. It was just like Eiji had to make a question of it. He could almost hear the anxiety in his voice through the text. 

Well, it wasn’t like he should hold it against him for finding someone, after all. It would suck for him a little bit, but he’d get over it, and at least he knew now, before he’d made any more of a fool of himself. 

It was kind of nice that Eiji had still thought about him enough to message, too. Maybe they still had a shot at being friends. 

_Of course_ , he answered, careful with the punctuation. _Go to sleep_. 

_Okay, night!_ Followed by a cute moon emoji. Hm. He didn't really bother with emoji when he messaged, but Nagi had recently decided that teaching him “the absolute basics of digital literacy” was his personal mission, so maybe he'd ask about how they worked sometime. 

For the moment, he just followed his own advice and went to bed himself. 

(He slept much easier than he would have before Eiji's message.) 

* * *

At practice the next day, Yamato tried his best not to treat Eiji differently from normal—that is, differently from any of the members at all. 

He was trying his best not to let his own heartbreak get to him, but it was hard, and he didn't want it to impact his performance as assistant captain. Easier to stay on the other side of the room and help some of the first- and second-years with their ring mounts then to rub his face in his rejection by hanging around in Eiji’s vicinity. 

Still, it was hard not to keep an eye on the whole room, out of habit if nothing else, and harder still not to keep an eye out for Eiji in particular. He was in line for an exercise on the balance beam, near the back of the line and doing that same small, muted fidgeting he often did. It made it easy to pick him out of the line of members, even across the room. 

Something about it seemed...off, though. He didn't want to pay too close attention, so he tried to ignore it, but something was buzzing uneasily at the base of his skull and kept him turning towards the beam work side of the room as Eiji shuffled down the line. Luckily Yamato was used to dividing his attention among different practice areas at once, so he felt comfortable continuing to spot the ring practice in front of him. 

He quickly fell back into the rhythm of spotting, falling into a haze of muscle memory and eyes and ears and intuition...but then he held up a hand to the freshman about to mount and stepped away from the rings, without consciously realizing what he was doing. 

He didn't even recognize at first what he was moving towards, his brain two steps behind his body as it moved towards the unsteady figure on the balance beam, moving like beginner who was about to try a move that was definitely a bad idea. 

By the time he realized _who_ he was seeing, Eiji had already started to fall. 

Yamato lunged. 

_Thud._

If the uncharacteristically loud sound and the accompanying tangle of limbs hadn't brought the rest of the room to a halt, then Yamato's half yell a split second later would have. 

"Are you okay?!" 

"...Yes?" Eiji seemed dazed, blinking up at him. "What—when—" 

Yamato interrupted him, though at least he wrestled his volume down to something more reasonable. "Did you hit your head?" 

"I don't think so—" 

"Pain anywhere else?" 

"Just my ankle." Eiji pushed himself up under his own power, looking sheepish. “I might’ve done something to it yesterday.” 

"So _that’s_ why you were wobbling. Left or right?" 

"Left." 

Yamato set Eiji down fully on the floor so he could take the ankle in both hands. "It doesn't seem too swollen...does this hurt?" 

"A little." 

"Not a break then, probably. Hopefully just a sprain. When'd it happen?" 

Eiji's voice got even quieter. "Yesterday afternoon." 

Something in Yamato's brain was trying to tell him something, but there was still too much adrenaline buzzing through his system to be able to tell what it was. "Yesterday...afternoon." 

"Yes,” Eiji said. He looked flustered now, for some reason. 

"And you thought you'd be okay today?!" Yamato said. "You have to at least check with the captain after something like that! Did you even go to the school nurse?!" 

"...It's...really not that big of a deal..." 

"Even if it isn't _now_ , practicing on an injury can make it worse. At the very least, you're going to have to ice it again." He released Eiji's ankle to stand up, offering a hand. "Up. No weight on that ankle, come on." 

Eiji muttered something, looking down at the floor. 

"Didn't catch that." Yamato leaned back down. "What?" 

"Nothing, I just—" 

" _What._ " 

"I didn't want to miss seeing you again," Eiji said, face bright red, voice still low. He looked upset enough that it took a moment for Yamato to understand what he'd said, or think about the implications. 

It wasn't till he had Eiji's arm wrapped around his shoulders, taking most of his weight, that it clicked. He wondered desperately if Eiji could hear his heart rate pick up through his ribs. "Come on," he said, quietly. "Let's ice that ankle, and we'll talk." 

A few of the other team members had gathered around them, but dispersed as Yamato yelled over to the captain that he was taking Eiji out of the practice and as Eiji, still red, assured anyone who so much as looked in his direction that he was okay. Yamato focused on dragging Eiji along without taking him literally off his feet, letting him take some of his own weight with every other step. 

Once they got out of the practice room, Yamato steered Eiji to a bench, ordered him to stay put, and left to get supplies from the front desk. The student employees took his word for it that he knew how to use the bandages and ice packs and that it was a situation he could handle; it paid to be good at what he did, and they knew he wouldn't hesitate to demand the on-call doctor for something potentially serious. (Also, apparently his "scary face" didn't hurt either, according to his teammates, though he wasn't sure what was up with that. His face was his face, and it wasn't like he was doing anything special with it.) 

By the time he came back, Eiji seemed to have calmed down somewhat, but he'd also rolled up his exercise pants and was examining his ankle. 

"You better not be messing with that," Yamato said, crouching down in front of him. "Here, let me see." 

"I'm not," Eiji promised, but extended his ankle anyway. 

He was smaller than Yamato and fine-boned on top of it; his foot felt uncomfortably delicate in Yamato's hands as he held it up for inspection. "I'm going to move it around, so tell me what hurts, okay?" 

"You did this alrea—” Eiji gulped as Yamato shot him a Look. "Okay," he said, barely a whisper. 

Yamato shook his head, grumbling, and began bending Eiji's ankle back and forth, mindful of any reactions. 

Eiji seemed okay, for the most part. This close, and paying attention, Yamato could hear little stutters in Eiji's breath when he shifted his grip on his heel, and when he pressed his palm against the top of his foot to extend it gently downward, but neither of those sounds seemed like pain, so it was probably fine. There was one angle when he heard a different, sharp intake of breath, and he froze, waiting. 

"That...hurt a little," Eiji admitted quietly, and Yamato nodded in approval, maneuvering it back to straight. 

"Okay," he said. "Then we'll put the ice on this side." He wrapped a bandage from Eiji's calf to his heel, securing it with the ease of long practice. "Wiggle your toes. Too tight?" 

"No, it's fine. Th-thank you." Eiji's voice was still hushed, and before he could think about it Yamato leaned in to hear him better. He was looking flushed again. 

Yamato handed over a towel-wrapped ice pack. "Here. You know the drill, right? Twenty minutes for now, do it again in a couple hours." 

"Got it," Eiji said. 

"Good. Hang on." 

"What—ah!" 

Carefully taking hold of Eiji's leg, Yamato pivoted him so he was sitting sideways on the bench with his foot in Yamato's lap. "We'll elevate it for a bit," he said. "Comfortable?" 

"S-sure," Eiji said. 

"Good." Careful not to disturb the foot in his lap, he twisted and leaned sideways, planting one arm on the bench so he could get a little further into Eiji's space. "Now. Is this why you didn't come to the workout I invited you to yesterday?" 

Eiji's shoulders hunched. "Yeah. You saw my message, right? I'm sorry I sent it so late, I was actually on my way over when I tripped. It was stupid." 

Yamato nodded. "Yeah, I think I actually saw you. You were with someone—helping you home?" 

"Yeah," Eiji said. "My friend Van—well he's more a friend of my brother's, but he was kind enough to help me back to the dorms." 

Yamato mercilessly squashed the last hint of jealousy that rose in his stomach at that. "That was a good call," he said seriously. "You know what would have made it even better? Staying home from practice today, too, or at least talking with me or the captain before you got on a _balance beam_. You coulda really hurt yourself—you know that, right?" 

Eiji shrank in on himself further. "I know. I'm sorry." 

"Good. So you're gonna rest up till this gets better, yeah?" Yamato squeezed Eiji's leg a little for emphasis—when had his free hand ended up there?—and watched with surprise when he squeaked. That wasn't how people usually responded to his pep talks, or to touching. "All right?" he repeated, covering for the moment of confusion. 

"Y-yeah, sorry," Eiji said again. He still looked uncomfortable, growing tenser when Yamato smoothed over the fabric over his knee by way of apology. Yamato, finally getting the hint, went to remove his hand, but stopped when Eiji began, "I..." 

He looked like he was about to start mumbling again. "What's up?" Yamato asked. 

"I...guess I shouldn't come to practice for a bit, then? I wouldn't want to be in the way..." 

"Nah, you can come watch, as long as you keep your weight off of this as much as you can. You can get a brace for it if it's still hurting tomorrow, but if not you'll probably be fine to practice again in a week, maybe two." 

"Oh." Eiji looked a little relieved. "That's good." 

Yamato frowned. "You know...you coulda told me you'd gotten injured yesterday. I could've checked it out then." Yamato felt his own voice drop to a mutter as he admitted, "Would've been nice to know why you couldn't make it out." 

"I...couldn't possibly...” Eiji began, and then cut himself off, as if he’d only just realized what Yamato was saying. "Wait, what?" 

"I was kinda hoping...we could hang out more," Yamato said. "Like, in general. …...I don't invite just anyone to my workouts, you know?" 

Eiji swallowed. "Then it's not just—you don’t just think I'm weak or something?" 

Yamato sighed, and reached out a hand. "You actually have a lot of potential, like I've said, so quit that." 

Eiji chuckled and bent his head obediently, accepting the rebuke. They were both surprised when Yamato reached a bit further; he'd meant to tousle his hair a bit, but it turned into something gentler without his permission. Eiji's hair was remarkably soft and fine between his fingers. 

_He's too cute_ , he thought despairingly. 

"...It's because," he began, aware that he'd left Eiji hanging, "you seem like...a really cool guy. I'd like to get to know you better—y'know. If that's something you're cool with." 

He swallowed hard, heart pounding, and took his hand away, running it down Eiji’s arm and willing him to understand. Dammit, he was probably just making things weird, why was it so hard to talk about things like this? 

"Um," Eiji said, and Yamato met his eye warily—he was probably going way overboard with the touching, and Eiji would be well within his rights to tell him off at this point—but Eiji didn’t look upset, exactly. "I've also b-been thinking that, uh, I'd...like to spend more time together—with you, I mean." 

"Yeah?" He felt a smile growing on his face without his permission. 

Eiji bit his lip, took Yamato’s hand in both of his, and nodded. "Yes," he said, firmly, giving the hand a small squeeze. 

"That's...good," Yamato said. "You shouldn't move around too much on that leg, so, uh...maybe we could get dinner, or something?" 

Eiji nodded again, biting his lip. Then he took his grip on Yamato’s hand to tug him closer. Before Yamato could process what was happening, he'd leaned forward and pressed a feather-light kiss to his cheek. "Dinner," he whispered, and grinned, bright pink to the roots of his hair. 

Yamato put one hand to his cheek, shocked. "Cool," he said, and swallowed. "Great. Um…do you...can I help you back to your dorm?" 

“I’d like that,” Eiji said. 

“Great,” Yamato said again, and grinned. “Then let’s get your stuff and go.” 

For once, Yamato didn’t mind missing the rest of practice, not even a tiny bit. And if Eiji happened to lean on him a little more than he might have really needed to, then Yamato certainly wasn’t going to complain. 


End file.
